This is a reminder from 2013. In USA, nothing. Eat that. Companies such as Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer will no longer be allowed to plant or sell their genetically modified corn within the country’s borders, a Mexican judge ruled last week. The decision, which came nearly two years after the Mexican government put Monsanto’s GE corn on hold, citing the need for more tests, makes Mexico a leading player in the global battle against genetically modified organisms. According to Environmental Food and Justice, Judge Jaime Eduardo Verdugo J. of the Twelfth Federal District Court for Civil Matters of Mexico City ruled that the genetically engineered corn posed ”the risk of imminent harm to the environment.” He also ordered Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT), which is equivalent to the U.S. EPA, to immediately “suspend all activities involving the planting of transgenic corn in the country and end the granting of permission for experimental and pilot commercial plantings.” The ruling means Monsanto and other biotech companies must halt all activity in the country while collective action lawsuits initiated by citizens, farmers, scientists and other concerned parties work their way through the judicial system. According to a local press release, the group Acción Colectiva, or Collective Action — which is led by Father Miguel Concha of the Human Rights Center Fray Francisco de Vittoria — aims to achieve an absolute federal declaration of the suspension of transgenic maize in all its forms, including experimental and pilot commercial plantings in the country considered “the birthplace of corn in the world.” Rene Sanchez Galindo, the legal council for Acción Colectiva in the lawsuit, said the ruling by Judge Eduardo Verdugo “constitutes a milestone in the long struggle of citizen demands for a GMO-free country.”
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 20:41:42 +0000
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